During
FY 1998, the U.S. Information Agency (USIA) provided
regular coverage of NASA-related events in its news
services, the print-based Washington File, the Voice
of America's news broadcasts, and WORLDNET Television's
Newsfile. Other feature stories and thematic programs,
often presented in local languages, carried accounts
of NASA and related topics, to all regions of the
world. For example, WORLDNET Television's Newsfile
series carried a total of 43 NASA-related stories
during the last fiscal year, with topics ranging from
the Mir spacewalk to updates on the Mars Pathfinder
project.

NASA
officials and astronauts routinely make themselves available
for USIA programs. NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin participated
in U.S. Information Service (USIS)as USIA is known
abroadprograms in Germany, France, and Italy, in which
he highlighted cooperation with each of those countries.
He discussed the ISS, continued cooperation with the Russians,
and NASA's vision for the 21st century.

One
program offered a USIS Singapore-arranged interview with
astronaut Guy Gardner for the local television network.
Another program had USIS Italy-arranged coverage on Italian
television of a visit by all seven of the STS-84 astronauts
as they worked with Italian public and private partners
on a project to support space education in Italy. The day
after the astronauts arrived, the Italian government announced
its approval of an expanded multibillion-dollar 5-year program
of research and development in space exploration, which
will make the Italian Space Agency one of NASA's leading
international partners. A WORLDNET "Window on America" segment
featured a Ukrainian astronaut in training for an upcoming
Space Shuttle mission.

In
FY 1998, the WORLDNET service broadcast nine interactive
dialogs, among them a call-in program in Spanish, in which
callers from around Latin America were able to speak with
two Spanish-speaking NASA officials on NASA's future projects.
A program titled "Space Exploration and Technology Transfer"
in English and Arabic featured Robert Dotts, Assistant Director
of the Technology Transfer and Commercialization Office
at the Johnson Space Center, for viewers throughout the
Middle East.

USIS
San José hosted an important WORLDNET interactive
dialog with Costa Rica's national hero, astronaut Franklin
Chang-Díaz, during his sixth mission in space. Costa
Rican-born Chang-Díaz maintains strong ties to his
native country and spends a good part of each year conducting
environmental and tropical disease research at an internationally
renowned center in Costa Rica. In June 1998, USIS San José
linked Chang-Díaz in space aboard the Space Shuttle
Discovery with the remote research center in Costa Rica
and also with Costa Rican President Miguel Rodriguez, then
in New York for a United Nations meeting.

USIA
also continued to make information on NASA activities available
on its World Wide Web sites. These sites maintain links
to NASA's home page and its daily space photograph.